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Blair takes free trade crusade to Argentina

This article is more than 22 years old

Tony Blair will today offer British support to Argentina in its struggle to avoid economic collapse - in return for Buenos Aires joining an Anglo-Latin alliance to promote free trade against the militancy of anti-globalisation campaigners.

After using his six-day tour of central and Latin America to brand protesters who disrupted the Gothenburg and Genoa summits as both misguided and wrong, Mr Blair wants to enlist emerging economic powers such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico to help make his case.

"The prime minister believes people at the sharp end of the globalisation debate have a much more realistic view of the benefits of globalisation than was seen in the caricature of the debate from some of the demonstrators in Genoa," his official spokesman said.

Mr Blair is still smarting at the way progress on trade, environmental and other reforms was overshadowed by a militant minority of protesters. But he appears to have modified his tone - even as his talks with Brazil have reinforced his conviction that he is right.

An informal alliance with leading Latin American states to promote globalisation would also serve to counter protectionist instincts within the EU, Downing Street claims.

After Mr Blair again criticised anti-globalisation campaigners in a speech to business leaders in Sao Paulo, his detractors finally caught up with him yesterday when a Greenpeace activist was manhandled by police.

The Briton had tried to hand over a letter protesting at continued British imports of wood, notably chipboard made from illegally logged timber from Brazil's threatened rain forests. The protester was not detained.

Mr Blair and his Brazilian host, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, later flew to the spectacular Iguazu falls on the Argentine border for a three-way summit with President Fernando de la Rua of Argentina.

Nearly 20 years after Britain and Argentina went to war over the Falkland Islands, Mr Blair will become the first serving prime minister to step on Argentine soil when he joins President de la Rua for a symbolic meeting today.

Both have agreed to put the disputed sovereignty issue to one side and resume normal bilateral relations on economic and political issues, including fishing and oil exploration off the Falklands.

Mr Blair wishes to go further, even as the Argentine government grapples with a financial crisis that threatens a decade of relatively stable growth since the peso was tied to the US dollar in 1991.

Ironically the strong peso has damaged Argentina in a way familiar to British exporters travelling with Mr Blair in search of business: by making imports cheaper and exports less of a bargain.

Brazil undermined its neighbour still further by devaluing its currency in 1999. Spending cuts agreed this weekend may help to stave off devaluation for Argentina, but it is reeling from a loss of jobs and investor confidence and rising debt.

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